Molokai: Your own Private Island (Well, Almost)

Have you ever dreamed of escaping to a (practically) deserted island? Go to Molokai! It’s actually better than your own private island, because the restaurants mean you don’t have to cook for yourself and you can get ice cream whenever you need it.

Molokai has less than 7,500 inhabitants, and gets few tourists, especially ones that stay overnight.

We were regularly the only ones on the beach, occasionally sharing with a local family or tourist couple.

If there’s any downside, it’s that there isn’t much to do. There are a few sights and a couple of hikes, but there is no night life, no commercial shopping, no building over two stories, and only about a dozen restaurants. It was heaven! If you need more activity than sunbathing and swimming, you may get bored here. Be sure to really like your travel companion.

The Molokaiians are fiercely protective of their home. The island used to have an upscale hotel and golf course, but when the owner wanted to develop Lu’au Point, the locals refused to grant permission. The owner threatened to pull all his businesses including a grocery store and the only movie theatre, but the locals stood their ground. They lost their largest employer and some major businesses, but they protected a priceless piece of this earth.

We found the locals to be quite friendly. Everywhere we went we were asked “Are you here visiting?”, which I found hilarious. They may have a bad reputation, but we found if we were friendly and respectful of their home, they were very kind to us.

Molokai Post Office – One tourist stop I recommend is the Molokai Post Office. They have a mound of coconuts for you to choose from, which you can then decorate and ship to almost anywhere in the world (sorry Australians, your government forbids this). I picked one that still had liquid in it, hoping that it would still be fresh when it arrived. The coconut is free and you just have to pay for the shipping, by weight. You write the address directly on the fruit and then they cover it with a sheet of colourful stamps. Four weeks later it finally arrived to Canada, and the coconut water was still fresh!